The Digital Cliff

[altivo]

That's a term used to describe the abrupt decay to unusable of a digital signal at a certain distance from the transmitter. The point at which this occurs depends on the height of the transmitting and receiving antennas, the terrain between them, the frequency of the signal, and various other factors. I got around this evening to looking at

Comments

[quickcasey]

Happy birthday to Gary.

I can't believe the digital TV signal is not everywhere. Bummer.

[altivo]

Even analog television was not everywhere. Digital doesn't travel as far as analog did.

I'll tell Gary you wished him a happy.

[rustitobuck]

Analog "goes farther" because some people can put up with interference and a little snow. Digital holds its clarity under adverse conditions...until the bit error rate gets too high, and then it totally goes to pieces. Hence, the "cliff."

[doco]

Satellite dish at a distance from the house? Huh? Why?

... I'm actually surprised that in a developed country, people were still actually _using_ terrestrial TV. I thought the UK was behind with that, turns out the US is much, much worse.

[altivo]

I think Europeans often fail to appreciate the greater distances between dense population centers in North America. Combine that with the fact that services such as DSL or cable television require an investment in infrastructure that is proportional to the distance to be covered, and you will easily see why profit-based corporations decline to provide those services to the rural zones between cities. Where in many European nations the government can and does intervene to make sure that everyone gets equal access to such services, in the US it depends entirely on the good will of the corporations. If they choose to write off rural residents as "irrelevant" or "insignificant" that's the end of it

[lobowolf]

The US suffers from being very large and very spread-out. Population densities are minuscule by European standards and cable companies "cherry pick" and only cover places where the population density is high.

It's the same issue with Internet connectivity. Covering the "last mile" for rural customers hasn't been done because it's extremely expensive and there's some brutal terrain to overcome.

[lobowolf]

Happy Birthday to Gary!

I'm in the same boat with TV. I've lost all of my Boston stations (as I predicted). I could probably put up a dish, but I don't want to pay $60 a month. TV in its present form isn't worth paying anything for.

I have one PBS station (X3 streams), one religious station (X4 streams) and one ABC affiliate (1 stream). It's there, but I have no CBS, no NBC and no FOX.

[altivo]

Fox and NBC are no loss anyway. We did like the news and weather from the independent WGN, though. It's popular on cable systems all over the US because it's so "different" from the network affiliates.

PBS reception was never good here. We have the coupons, and will probably get the box anyway, but I doubt it will do much.

I'll pass your greeting on to Gary. Thanks.

[lobowolf]

I got the same feeling that you did. The FCC said "Oh well, screw the rural TV watchers. They don't count. Besides, it's 2009..everyone has cable or satellite!" :P

[altivo]

I'm getting used to the "let them eat cake" attitude. We've heard it on health care, education, access to the internet, and now television. If the digital radio proponents get their way, we'll be hearing it about radio as well. The BBC already did it to us on international short wave news coverage several years ago. They decided that the US no longer needed to receive BBC World Service, since they provide it as an internet stream. Good thinking guys. How many of your listeners were in rural areas? Did you even ask? I think not. The print newspapers are going to be leaving us high and dry too as they move to internet only, with high bandwidth pages that we can't pull down over a 40 Kbit connection, dumping their rural readers into the trash bin as all the rest of the corporate entities have done.

[jmaynard]

You wanted to put up a tower anyway.

[altivo]

Nope. I do not and will not.

[silver_kiden]

you should write to all the major news corporations, about how rural areas are quite literally being cut off from the rest of the world. who knows, it might even see the light of day! also, tell gary that i'm sending him an e-lapdance for his birthday. :p

[altivo]

I think the major news corporations are part of the decision to write off rural areas as irrelevant. Occasionally they do an item on it, but no one cares.

I did complain to the BBC and received a reply that seemed not to be just a form letter. Even so, it said in essence that people in the rural US didn't matter much to them. Like the rest of the corporate powers, they don't get any income from here, so I guess that makes a sort of logical sense.

As for lap dances, Gary would run away or hide under the chair. He gets embarrassed even by very mild things. ;p

[silver_kiden]

well, isn't that just the cutest thing in the world!

[altivo]

Sometimes, yes. On the other hoof, he can sit through violence laden films without blinking while I have to go throw up after five minutes.